Dershowitz on War and Values, M. Frindéthié

On Tuesday, July 29, 2014, during a CNN debate, Alan Dershowitz submitted that Israel’s offensive operations in Gaza should be supported, because through its war against the Palestinian people, Israel was not only defending itself, but it was also, and most importantly, defending “Western values.” I could not help wondering what Western values, the values of which Western social engineer, Dershowitz was referring to. The values advocated by King Leopold II of Belgium in the Congo? The values promoted by Hernan Cortez in the Americas? The values put forth by Hitler in Germany? Or the values of Sarkozy in Cote d’Ivoire? The last time I checked, these social engineers were all “Westerners” convinced that the values they upheld were of the highest kind.

Throughout history, Western civilization has shown time and time again that it does not have the last word on superlative values. Isn’t time that Dershowitz and those who think like him started ridding themselves of their anxieties about “higher” and lower “peoples”? Isn’t time that they started thinking in terms of the suffering of the human race and stopped ranking distress and torment on the basis of race, ethnicity, creed, and nationality?